Sourhouse Tunes of the Year 2025
Stick it out to the end.
A word from the editor:
Will anything save us in these dark days? Music seems to be a loss. Address the times head on and you will never have the space to encapsulate it all. Take a stand on anything and you face the consequences. In the name of free speech, Bob Vylan and Kneecap have had gigs censored and protested, and have been legally challenged this year for stating that a genocide is occurring in Palestine. You look back on the history of Punk and protest music and think you can make sense of the censorship. Living through it is quite different.
Yet life goes on. Our immediate worlds – our friends, family, neighbourhoods – are still here, and mostly untainted. But you still have to reckon with resolving the discrepancies between the wider world and your personal life. It’s a daily task now. When everything from the news on the radio to the incendiary ravings of bot accounts on social media to the malicious adverts now being shown on your fridge are blaring pure insanity back at you, what on earth are you supposed to listen to?
You could always turn to depressive music, yes. But the medium has another answer: Pop. Bounding, glorious Pop, now in the third year of its incredible mid-decade revival. It’s not perfect by any means: they’re still trying to gaslight you into liking Gracie Abrams, they’ve forced Benson Boone to start queer baiting, and by the end of next year, AI singles are going to be all the more common. But right now, at its strongest, talent old and new are producing material we’ll one day be calling classics.
It’s not about trying to distract yourself. That seems too callous. But if my listening can’t deal with being political, it appears that I am gravitating towards songs about the passing of time and the importance of love. I guess it could be that I’m getting older. But I think it might actually be a coping strategy. Despite our horrifying global circumstances, there will be people still having the time of their lives, not because they are unaffected by it all, but because we still have to go on living. Resistance is as much refusing to become as miserable as it is opposing injustice.
Pop is one such genre whose current stars are making the means to facilitate that. Surviving this autumn of our age is choosing to prioritise what is around you, the real people whose lives intertwine with your own, and affecting what you can actually affect. The music you listen to should follow suit. Just because the world is full of despair doesn’t mean it stops needing a soundtrack. On those laurels, we’ll all find a way to stick it out to the end.
The 30 songs on this year’s list are a statement on what love, introspection and joy sounded like in the midpoint of the 2020s. Its artists include staples of this blog and brand new talent. Qualification is any new song that was released as a single, music video or had radio air time between 1st December 2024 and 30th November 2025. Anything marked as ‘Personal favourite’ has received the highest accolade I can give music. Let’s count down the Sourhouse Tunes of the Year 2025.
-Munro Page, writer of Sourhouse Music
Positions #30-#21
#30 THE TING TINGS – GOOD PEOPLE DO BAD THINGS
The Ting Tings are back! Well, it’s exciting for me at the very least. They’re turned into Fleetwood Mac! Not literally, but sonically, they kinda have, with a healthy sprinkling of Gerry Rafferty too. ‘Good People Do Bad Things’ really is unlike anything from their late-00’s heyday, and quite what the intention is, is anyone’s guess. But on numerous baking hot days this year, this brought the cool and calm needed to make it a more-than-memorable summer, Katie White’s vocals feeling so at home in the world of Yacht Rock. Not all comebacks need resurrect the past.
#29 VANCO, AYA – MA TNSANI (YALLA HABIBI)
There are two means by which you’ll have heard of ‘Ma Tnsani’. One: you went to Zakynthos this year, where the song briefly became the national anthem and was being played at every beach bar on the island. Two: the TikTok brainrot machine got “Ahlelele Ahlelas” stuck in your head. That’s an Anglicised version of “ahla laila, ahla nas”, the Arabic for “The best night, the best people”. There’s no doubt that ‘Ma Tnsani’ is posh club music, but its also a product of a globalised music industry: South African DJ, Afrobeat stylings, Arabic lyrics, pan-East/West popularity. It’s not destined to fix geographical inequalities in music when its clientele are the ones able to afford entry fees to DJ residencies, but that ever-rising beat and insatiable groove are too tasty to ignore. User @naw_sir is right: we all need to ahla laila, ahla nas” one more time.
#28 TYLA – CHANEL
It’s no coincidence that the you can reword the chorus to ‘Chanel’ with “Holy fuck this catchy as hell”. Tyla’s voice is nourishing to the soul, and also happens to meld with Afropiano instrumentation with complete flushness. She’s harder here in some moments than usual, adding edge to what is a terrifically dense construction. Decorated with effortless, torso-popping flourishes (spot that brilliant hiccup sample), Tyla takes her sun-kissed discography right into the sweat of the dancehall on a track that buzzes with nocturnal energy and demands dimly-lit listening.
#27 OLIVIA DEAN – MAN I NEED
You needn’t revolutionise Pop Soul when you have a voice like Olivia Dean. Her success this year has been enormous, yet unsurprising when you think about it. A space for an artist like her has been vacant for a decade plus at this point, the wake of what Amy Winehouse left having never been filled by the Emeli Sandés and Sam Smiths that came after. There’s no point pontificating whether Dean is of that calibre. But in comparison to what we have on offer today for commercial artists sold on their amazing vocals – the faux astonishment of a TV singing contest, the over-sung fodder of an artist of captioning their social media posts with “[my single] out now!” – she’s a ray of light. ‘Man I Need’ treads elegantly over that joyful piano, contemporary and buoyant, strung together with a great sense of rhythm and the irresistible warmth of Dean’s delivery.
#26 SAINT ETIENNE – GLAD
Here it is folks, the last ever lead single from a Saint Etienne album. After 37 years, the iconoclast dance trio, legends of the British alternative scene and beloved by this blog, are calling it a day. ‘Glad’s bounding, sunshine joy is therefore made bittersweet, but not to any detriment. As the saying goes, boy have they still got it. Big, staccato synths form that chunky hook, retro yet still so enlightening, whilst Sarah Cracknell’s indelible vocals add honey warmth to what is a thoroughly bluesky listen. After a career that has taken them down every path, from techno Christmas bangers to woozy, uber-saturated audiovisual trips, a return to the Rave-adjacent Alternative Dance sounds of their early 90s breakthrough feels only fitting.
#25 BILLY NOMATES – THE TEST
Tor Maries has a knack for holding us just far back enough from her hurt that we cannot see it in full. In interviews, she’s said that ‘The Test’ actually has a far more positive background than its solemnity would imply, musing on an ethereal connection and what it takes to keep the memory of someone alive. Metaphors of fairgrounds and race cars, each whirring around her, create a tumultuous feeling of barely being in control. Like some bad dream, she is forced to perform one trick after another, each more daring and dangerous, just to hold on. It’s a flavour of tragedy I didn’t realise I needed satiating.
#24 MOUNT PALOMAR, MAKESHIFT ART BAR – PASS THE PARCEL
Urban, oppressive, pulsing with angst and defined by the stunning vocal performance of Joseph Sweeney, ‘Pass The Parcel’ is gloom turned exciting. Belfast electronic artist Mount Palomar collaborates with newcomers Makeshift Art Bar to form the year’s best marriage of Post Punk and Techno. The track dives from one strobe-lit space to another, dodging shadows and diving down side alleys in the process, in what is a clawing and atmospheric listen.
#23 MILEY CYRUS, BRITTANY HOWARD – WALK OF FAME
Words that my 12 year old self, singing along to ‘Party In The USA’, could never imagine me writing: Miley Cyrus is a musical chameleon. For better and for worse (only on occasion), she has given her voice to whatever has taken her whim. Undaunted by the risk, on ‘Walk Of Fame’, she creates something mesmerisingly dense, the claustrophobia of a dancefloor that’s too busy mixed with the ferocious need to salvage a night out. Collaborating with the indomitable Brittany Howard and – get this – sampling both ‘Smalltown Boy’ and ‘Blue Monday’, she whips together a wall-of-sound rebuttal to a former lover, shutting them down to embrace the old school imaginary glamour of gay clubs and drag nights. It’s an enormous tune, tumultuous and rhapsodic, most certainly one of the most adventurous things Cyrus has ever accomplished.
#22 SOMBR – BACK TO FRIENDS
Sombr isn’t doing anything revolutionary on ‘Back To Friends’, and lord knows this blog has talked about plenty of room-filling anthems chronicling the end of relationships. But ‘big’ is the key word here; the consideration with which this thing grows, strings adding to the drama on that final chorus, translates the impending sense of heartbreak and doom with absolute majesty. Shifting every vocal hook off-beat ensures this smart and well-planned cut puts emotional strife at its core. A Dream Pop song dressed up with Power Pop sharpness, ‘Back To Friends’ is an enigmatic success.
#21 CALVIN HARRIS, CLEMENTINE DOUGLAS – BLESSINGS
There’s nothing big or clever about a Calvin Harris single. He’s long since given up being a taste maker to be a taste affirmer, which earlier this year led to him taking a bizarre detour into Country. Yeah, me neither. But you can’t deny that he knows what makes for great dance music, and that he does his research. ‘Blessings’ joins the canon of the Euro House revival and instantly became one of its complete additions upon release. No, there’s nothing new with that guitar lick. And no, there’s nothing remarkable about Douglas’s vocals. But damn is it catchy, damn does it deliver sun-kissed Mediterranean vibes, and damn does that final drop break through the fucking rafters.
